Cannot install Windows 7 on brand new drive. Please help.

Hi,
I have just put a brand new hard disk in my PC and wish to install Windows 7 to it.

When I reach the "Where do you want to install Windows" screen I select the drive, select NEW to create a new partition and then select FORMAT to format it.

Normally I would expect two partitions to appear.
One called System Reserved and the other Unallocated Space.

Instead all I am seeing is Unallocated Space and I don't seem to be able to install Windows to it.

Please can somebody explain what I have to do here?

Many thanks for any help.

Double clicking the unallocated space works iirc. Alternatively, go into the advanced options and create an NTFS partition, it will warn you windows may create additional partitions, should work..

Hi Pipexer and thank you for your advice.

Whilst I am sure you are right I discovered why I had an issue when I rechecked the BIOS.

I hadn't set the hard drive in question as the first boot drive!

In reply to a post by VWGolfman:

Hi Pipexer and thank you for your advice.

Whilst I am sure you are right I discovered why I had an issue when I rechecked the BIOS.

I hadn't set the hard drive in question as the first boot drive!

It shouldn't have mattered what boot order the hdd is ...

any new drive will only be unallocated space, it is not a problem.

I normally do this although is probably an easier procedure.

1 - click advanced (bottom right)
2 - click the drive you want to use, in your case the unallocated space
3 - click format, this will do a quick format which should take about 5 seconds
4 - then click on the now formatted drive and click on next to install

it may make a 100meg system partition when you format so you have 2 drives, in that case click on the other one, the one with most of the space and ignore the 100meg partition.

Hi Chrysalis,
Windows Setup could not or would not create the (100 MB System) partition on which to install Windows until I set the drive in question as the first boot drive from within the BIOS.

Strange but true